


and there was blue again

by firedragonworks (firedragon32)



Series: Klance AU Month 2021 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Ending, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, M/M, No character death!, Team Voltron Family, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29382942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firedragon32/pseuds/firedragonworks
Summary: alternate ending tothis au!
Relationships: Allura & Coran & Hunk & Keith & Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt & Shiro, Allura & Lance (Voltron), Coran & Lance (Voltron), Hunk & Keith (Voltron), Hunk & Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt, Hunk & Lance (Voltron), Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron), Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt, Matt Holt & Keith, Matt Holt & Lance
Series: Klance AU Month 2021 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2158431
Comments: 14
Kudos: 32





	and there was blue again

**Author's Note:**

> I felt a little guilty for ending that au the way I did, so here’s an alternate ending if you’d like! <3

Blue. Blue as he knelt, gasping for breath. Blue eyes, like shards of broken glass. Blue armor, cracked and useless, digging into his skin and drawing bright beads of red.

Red, pooling beneath him, too much red, _too much red._

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

_Not like this._

Keith pressed his hand to the wound, and Lance hissed in pain. He was gripping Keith’s wrist, his hands shaking, fingers clammy.

“Keith,” he whispered, and Keith shook his head.

“No, you’re gonna be fine. I-I’ll figure this out, okay? Just stay with me.” He gripped Lance’s hand, maybe a little too hard. “Stay with me.” His voice cracked, a tear sliding down his cheek.

Lance lifted a shaking hand and brushed against Keith’s cheeks, wiping the tear away.

“It’s okay,” he murmured. He shuddered, squeezing his eyes shut. “It’s okay,” he repeated.

“No, it’s not!” Keith held him closer, pressing harder on his wound in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding.

Lance squeezed his hand. “T-Tell my family…”

“No! Tell them yourself!” It came out as more of a sob than a shout.

Lance’s eyes were fluttering closed; Keith shook him gently.

“No, you need to stay awake, you have to open your eyes! Please!” Panic clawed up Keith’s throat, horrible, bone-chilling fear. He couldn’t lose Lance. He _couldn’t._

Lance’s head dropped against Keith’s chest, his limp hand slipping from Keith’s; with frantic, scrabbling fingers, Keith grabbed Lance’s wrist to find a pulse. After a horrible moment of nothing, he could feel it, light and fluttering, like a butterfly’s wings.

Pounding footsteps announced Matt’s arrival; he held his battle staff, his armor scuffed from battle. He saw Keith and Lance, in the center of the battlefield, smeared with blood, and his eyes widened. He ran over, sliding down to kneel beside them. Matt held out his arms.

“I’ll take him to the Castle. You go finish the mission.”

Keith didn’t hesitate; he passed Lance over to Matt, ignoring the way Lance’s blood was smeared over his hands, the front of his armor.

“Go!” Matt yelled, backing away with Lance in his arms. “Take the bridge. We’ll be okay!”

And he turned and disappeared.

Keith took up his bayard and sprinted for the bridge. His heart raced, terror clouding his veins. If Lance didn’t make it…Keith didn’t know what he would do. Finish the war, obviously. Defeat the Galra, save the universe.

But how would he go on, without someone who has become so integrated into every part of his life? How would he continue without the person who was practically his other half?

Keith didn’t want to find out.

 _And I won’t. He’ll be okay. He_ has _to be okay._

Keith burst onto the bridge, surprising the Galra commander who stood at the front of the room. The rebels spilled inside behind him, fanning out to attack. Keith launched forward, bayard flashing red.

It only took a few minutes for them all to lock down the bridge. The Galra commander, soldiers, and engineers were piled up by the door, bound and unconscious.

Then _agony_ seared through Keith’s body, and he fell to his knees with a cry, clutching his head. It was right in his abdomen, spearing and twisting through his gut.

Right where Lance had been stabbed.

Keith peeled his eyes open, blinking away the black spots. And at the very corners of his vision…everything was tinged gray.

Lance was out of time.

Leaping to his feet, Keith sprinted for the door. He stumbled out into the hallway, hissing in pain as the phantom wound in his gut flared again. The rebels stayed behind, completing the mission; they’d all seen Lance’s injury. It didn’t take a genius to realize why Keith was running for the Castleship with every bit of strength he had.

He didn’t remember getting to Red, nor did he remember flying to the Castle. He did remember Red’s keening cry echoing in the back of his mind; Keith felt Lance’s pain, and Red felt Keith’s.

The moment Red touched down in the hangar, Keith was leaping from the pilot’s chair and stumbling down the ramp, his vision swimming with black and gray and fading wisps of blue.

Keith tore down the hallway, gasping as the agony twisted in his gut. His hair was escaping from its braid, framing his face with black strands, but he didn’t care. He burst into the infirmary just in time to see Coran practically throw Lance into the healing pod. It closed with a hiss, and Keith gasped as the twisting, gnawing pain in his gut slowly faded to numbness.

The gray pulsing at the edges of his vision stopped. It didn’t go away entirely, but it stopped spreading.

Keith’s knees buckled, and he only barely kept himself from collapsing entirely. Matt knelt beside him, rubbing his shoulders and murmuring something that Keith couldn’t make out. Blood rushed in his ears, and Keith’s exhales were shaky as the one fact, the one thing keeping him tethered, ran through his mind.

_He’s alive. God, he’s alive._

* * *

The team gathered in the infirmary as they always did. After the first few times of someone being in the pods, the family aboard the Castle started an unspoken tradition of sitting vigil by the pods until their teammate emerged.

Hunk, and Allura had gathered blankets and pillows, and now they and Pidge were creating a blanket nest. Coran stood by Lance’s pod, checking his vitals to ensure everything was as it should be. Shiro was on the bridge; he was sending communications to their allies, but he would be joining them within the varga.

Keith leaned against Lance’s pod, eyes closed as he listened to the gentle hum of the Altean technology sewing Lance’s body back together.

It had been close, Coran said. Much too close. If Matt had been even a few minutes slower in getting Lance here, or if Coran hadn’t had a pod ready and waiting…Keith didn’t like to think about what might have happened.

Shiro came down to the med bay a few dobashes later, silently resting a hand on Keith’s shoulder before going to join the rest of the team at the giant blanket nest. He knew Keith wouldn’t want to speak to anyone for a while.

The time passed; the team spoke in hushed tones, as if they might wake Lance if they spoke too loudly. Coran was telling them a story of some of his and Alfor’s adventures, and Hunk had brought in the Altean equivalent of a hot plate to cook some dinner.

Some time later, someone gently prodded at Keith’s knee, and he opened his eyes to see Hunk. He held a steaming plate of food in each hand.

“Can I join you?”

Keith sat up and nodded, wiping his face to make sure there weren’t any tears there.

Hunk sat down beside Keith, offering him one of the plates. Keith took it with a silent nod of thanks. They sat in comfortable silence for some time. Keith just pushed the food around on the plate; he didn’t have much of an appetite.

Thankfully, Hunk didn’t push; the Yellow Paladin wasn’t eating much either.

Finally, Keith set his plate aside and folded his arms across his knees. The small, smooth object in his hand had grown warm from the time he’s spent holding it; subconsciously, the pad of his thumb moved over it, feeling the grooves and smooth planes.

“What’s that?” Hunk asked softly. Everyone else had long since gone to sleep, and it was just the Red and Yellow Paladins, sitting vigil for the Blue.

Keith paused, glancing at the object in his hand. Shiro was the only person who knew about it; Keith had needed his advice. But he trusted Hunk with this. Keith opened his hand.

The ring sat on his palm, the opaque violet band glittering in the dim lights of the med bay.

Hunk gasped, his honey eyes flying up to meet Keith’s violet. “Is that-”

“Yeah.” Keith’s voice was cracked from disuse; he absently turned the ring over in his fingers. “I’ve been waiting to ask him. I wanted to do it when we got back to Earth.” Keith swallowed, tilting his head back against the cold metal of the pod. “I didn’t want to ask out here, because I don’t want to make promises we might not be able to keep.” His voice was quiet, swallowed by the silence around them.

Hunk nodded, his expression solemn. He knew as well as Keith did that anything could happen in war.

“I’m afraid of waiting, though,” Keith admitted softly. “What if…I wait, and something happens? He’ll never know how much he means to me.”

Hunk shifted, turning to face Keith. “I’ve known Lance almost all my life,” he said. “And I can tell you this: he knows. He knows how much you care about him.” He sighed heavily. “It’s up to you. But I don’t know if waiting is the best, considering what we do every day.”

Keith exhaled shakily, glancing away. “I know.”

* * *

Three days later, Keith stood in front of the pod, holding a thick blanket as Coran tapped at the screen.

“It’ll open in a few ticks,” he reported, eyes scanning the pod’s readings.

Keith positioned himself in front of the pod. It was one of the things they all knew how to do, catching a teammate coming out of the pod.

The glass slid away with a hiss and a cloud of mist, and Lance toppled out. Keith stepped forward and caught him, wrapping him in the blanket and holding him up.

Lance was cold as ice, slumping bonelessly against Keith.

_ “Yeobo,” _ Keith murmured, “can you hear me?”

Lance moaned, burying his face into Keith’s neck. Keith began to rub Lance’s arms to warm him. Lance shifted, moaning again as he began to wake up fully. He peeled his eyes open and pulled back, peering at Keith.

The corners of Keith’s lips twitched upward. “Hey. How’re you feeling?”

Lance shivered, wrapping the blanket tighter around himself and curling in closer to Keith’s warmth. “Kinda sore. Cold,” he mumbled. “It’s  _ really fucking freezing  _ in there.”

Keith huffed out a laugh, wrapping Lance in a tight hug. “Tell me about it.” He’d been in the pod enough times to know that an aching chill settled in his bones that persisted for hours after he emerged.

“Lance!” Hunk threw his arms around both Paladins, bringing them both into his embrace. Allura came in on the other side, wrapping her arms around Lance’s shoulders. Pidge wriggled between Allura and Hunk, and Shiro and Coran came around the opposite side, wrapping them all up in a huge hug.

In the very center of the hug, Lance sighed softly, sinking into the warmth of his space family all around him.

They stayed there for a long time; Keith’s legs were turning numb. Finally, Coran pulled back, followed by the rest of the team, one by one.

“You’d better get some rest, Lance,” Allura said, squeezing his arm. “We can have some food ready for when you wake up.”

Lance nodded, rubbing a hand over his face. “Man, I don’t remember being this tired last time,” he mumbled.

“That’s because you were inside the pod for so much longer!” Coran said, his usual cheerful manner returning. “You have over three quintants of sleep to regain!”

That was the main issue with the pods; even though the person inside was unconscious, they didn’t emerge feeling rested. As Shiro often said, unconsciousness didn’t count as actual sleep.

“Go on, off to bed with you,” Coran said, making shooing motions at Lance. “Keith will wake you up when it’s time, won’t he?”   
Keith nodded, helping Lance to the door. They were silent on their way to their room. Lance was still shivering; the recycled air of the Castle was cool, which probably wasn’t helping.

They reached their room and Keith opened the door. Lance slumped down on the bed, and Keith sighed. “Are you going to sleep in the suit?”

“Mmh,” Lance mumbled.

With some poking and prodding from Keith, Lance finally sat up and replaced the cryosuit with sweatpants and one of Keith’s shirts. He then flopped down, curling up beneath the covers.

Keith crawled in beside him, shifting to make himself comfortable. Lance was already half-asleep; Keith curled his fingers around Lance’s wrist, rubbing the pad of his thumb over Lance’s pulse.

He lay there long after Lance fell asleep.

The ring was carefully set aside where Lance wouldn’t find it; even so, it was burned into Keith’s mind, just like the blue.

Maybe Hunk was right. Maybe it was time.

Lance shifted and mumbled in his sleep, and Keith pressed his lips to Lance’s knuckles. He shifted closer, wrapping an arm around Lance’s waist and resting his head against Lance’s chest, right above his heartbeat.

Lance mumbled again and wrapped an arm around Keith, settling with a soft sigh.

And Keith fell asleep to the gentle, rhythmic beating of Lance’s heart.

**Author's Note:**

> [Here](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F44%2Fb1%2F63%2F44b163ea7fc10ab0c48b83b74b0cad77.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F828943875132415509%2F&tbnid=TIZGG8YQ7KQhKM&vet=12ahUKEwiS7f2xj-XuAhUDKH0KHXxpACIQMygTegUIARDcAg..i&docid=NlOlXv3H3qWxbM&w=340&h=270&q=purple%20wedding%20rings%20for%20men&ved=2ahUKEwiS7f2xj-XuAhUDKH0KHXxpACIQMygTegUIARDcAg) is the ring!
> 
> Thanks for reading!! <3<3<3


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